Marketing is only done for building a brand image and personal reputation—false. A company can run without any marketing—another false. You can still get satisfying ROI even without investing in marketing—again, false. All companies would always want to attract more customers and earn more, not to mention market competition.

Marketing isn’t only meant to establish brand awareness but also to drive the success of your business and ensure it stays sustainable throughout the following years. That’s why a long term marketing strategy is deemed necessary.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is now considered a long-term marketing tactic by many entrepreneurs and business owners, especially newly established companies. For hows and whys, here are the top advantages of SEO to startups.

Builds Brand Equity

For starters, one of your crucial stepping stones to your business success is product promotion. To do so, generating brand awareness is a must. Brand awareness is characterized by your target audience’s recognition of your brand. In other words, it’s the familiarity of your customers to your products and services, as well as how well they recognize your business.

Fortunately, everything is digital nowadays. Gone are the days when you have to invest in time-consuming print media to advertise your business. Marketing is now one click away. What’s more, with the help of SEO services, everything seems to be much easier.

SEO can guarantee that your company can be easily found by search engine sites. What are these sites? These include Google, Bing, Baidu, Yahoo!, and Yandex, which are the most popular search engines globally this 2020.

If you’re easily found by these search engines, either through unpaid or paid searches, you’ll remain at the top of the search ranking. If this is the case, internet users can be exposed to your site, which can mean a higher chance for your website link to be clicked. Hence, SEO can establish your company’s brand awareness even further.

Establishes Credibility

Once you successfully build your brand, there’s a need to maintain it. Customers will continue to invest their trust in your brand if you keep providing them with viable products and valuable services. Doing so is one crucial factor to bypass other competitors.

Another way to establish trust is through SEO. With its digital properties like optimized on-page elements and content, machine-learning signals, and quality backlink profiles, your company can accrue authority from different search engines. Technicalities aside, SEO provides positive user behavior and garner more traffic, which all plays a role in establishing credibility.

Prompts Market Share

As mentioned, once you’re on top of the search rankings, there’s a higher chance for your website to be checked on by Internet users, which are now considered as “leads.” These leads then can potentially turn into your clients or even business partners.

For customers, they will either connect to you via email for updates, subscribe to a newsletter, place an order, or sign up for a membership. All of these factors allow you to earn a share of the market further.

Works 24/7

SEO increases your website traffic and promotes your business round-the-clock. In fact, it only takes at least six months for any website to keep its optimal ranking. Moreover, since it’s working 24/7, it also takes a lot of time (and money) to pull your site down from the list, unless the Google algorithm is altered or your competitors will intensify their SEO strategy.

On that account, most startups, which, as mentioned, need to establish brand awareness at first, invest in SEO services and campaigns. Opting for SEO allows them to establish credibility right away.

Thanks to its demand, looking for SEO specialists has never been worrisome. Choosing for the best is now the problem. When calling on for an SEO service, make sure that it’ll accommodate your business’ needs. For AdInfusion, as an example, their goal is to provide a tailor-fit strategy for your business, target paid customers, clear SEO reports, and personal concierge service.

Higher Conversion and Close Rates

A good ranking guarantees high conversion rates. As explained, the longer you stay on your optimal ranking, the more your brand will be exposed to your target market. Consequently, you’ll get more leads. The more leads you have, the higher your conversion rate is.

What’s more, these SEO leads also guarantee a higher close rate with an average of 14.6% rating, as opposed to a 1.7% close rating from cold or outbound leads. This primarily happens because the customers are checking your company’s product or service themselves. On a positive note, it can be translated that they had already been fascinated by your brand and so they’re doing actual research themselves, which can result in a close rate.

Takeaway

SEO is also far more cost-effective. It’s actually free in the end! When you rank high on search engines, pay per clicks (PPC) will become free of charge. In this case, you can cease all your PPC ads. Allow your SEO rankings to drive more outputs.